Santa Clara County
Biographies
JOHN COLPETTS AINSLEY
Fruit culture in Santa Clara county has grown to be quite an industry and furnishes employment for many thousands of people during the canning season. In some localities the fresh fruit is placed in refrigerator cars and shipped to various parts of the United States; in others the fruit is dried or evaporated before shipping, but in many localities it is found that the best and most profitable way of caring for the products of these extensive orchards is by preserving the fruits by the process of canning and hermetically sealing them. It is this industry that occupies the attention of John Colpetts Ainsley, who owns and operates an extensive cannery at Campbell, the entire product of this cannery being shipped direct to England, his native land. Starting in this business in a small way in 1891, he canned but one thousand cases the first season, but in 1892 he built the large cannery which has been successfully operated by him ever since and which has a capacity of fifty thousand cans a day.
United as he is by close ties to Stokesley, Yorkshire, in the north of England, where he was born January 6, 1862, Mr. Ainsley is one of a family of five children born to Richard and Mary (Fortune) Ainsley. Both parents are still living, the father being a native of Yorkshire, and the mother of Durham, and it is in the latter county that they now reside, well advanced in year, the father being more than eighty. The early training of Mr. Ainsley as commenced in the public schools, and continued in Anderson Academy, West Hartlepool, and Birkbeck Institute of London, which he entered as a student in 1880.
It was not until 1884 that Mr. Ainsley came to the United States, first taking up his residence at Fields, Lorain county, Ohio, where he sojourned for a time with his uncle, William Fortune. He subsequently traveled to California and for a time worked as an employee in an orchard near Campbell. It was here that he gained his knowledge of fruit growing and in 1887 he purchased seven and one-half acres adjoining the town, planting it all in fruit. In 1890 he started a small cannery and laid the foundation to his present business.
The residence of Mr. Ainsley was built by him in 1892. By his marriage with Miss Alice M. Shelly, daughter of William and Mary Shelly, of Campbell, two children, Gordon and Dorothy, have been born. Mr. Ainsley is noted for his force of character, his foresight and capacity to plan and execute, and failure is unknown to him. Outside of his individual business interests, his career is not devoid of interest to the average citizen. He has been the friend and promoter of a number of worthy enterprises in his locality, among them the Waterworks Company and Bank of Campbell, being a director of both. As a member of both the Campbell Fruit Growers’ Union and the Santa Clara County Fruit Exchange, he keeps abreast of the times in his business. He also holds a membership in the Grange Society and politically is a Republican. Fraternally he is allied with the Masons, having joined the order in West Hartlepool, England.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Page 1258. The Chapman Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.